October 18, 2008
The Hawk Eye
Smoking ban remains hot topic
Other past bills may resurface in 2009.
In each legislative session, there are always bills that fall through the cracks and some that make it that leave room for improvement.
Whether it comes up, the July 1 implemented smoking ban remains a hot topic among lawmakers and their constituents.
Both District 87 state House candidates would like to see some changes to the law.
"What we ended up with is really in my opinion an unenforceable bill," Republican incumbent Rep. Tom Sands of Columbus Junction said. "Some will be challenging its constitutionality. That would take someone with a different degree than what I have to make that ruling."
He said the bill definitely is unfair the way it is written.
His Democratic opponent former Columbus City Mayor Frank Best said while he doesn't like it, he doesn't expect to see the bill disappearing completely.
"I think if every legislator up there was taken out, you still wouldn't repeal it," Best said. "You've got a governor who signed that bill and wants that to stay there."
Best said because of the unfairness toward small businesses, he would like to see the exemption for casinos be removed.
"I guess I'm more of the person who doesn't want to complain about what happened. I want to move forward," Best said. "Let's move on to things that are a little more important like what we're going to do with the economy and creating jobs."
Bottle bill
Although the expansion of the deposit law never made it into bill form, Sands said he would support bringing it up for discussion.
Because the Democratic majority didn't bring it up, Best believes the bill is not likely to come up again.
The proposal this year was to expand the items requiring a deposit to include water bottles and also upping the amount to a dime, with an 8-cent return.
"As a citizen who pays a nickel every time I go get pop, I don't think I want to see that," Best said. "I would like to hear both sides of it, obviously. It's hard to ever make a firm decision on anything until you've heard both sides of the argument."
Sands, however, hopes it's brought up to have a true discussion of modernizing what he considers an out-of-date bill.
"My idea of modernizing the bottle bill is move it more into the recycling," Sands said. "I think it's gong to take a little more time, but we could incent the cities that do not have curbside recycling."
Collective bargaining
Best said there were certain aspects of the collective bargaining bill that he had trouble with and others that he would be willing to open for discussion.
Best said his biggest concern was whether the arbitration portion going to district court would do away with due process. He's more open to talking about expanding the topics public employees can discuss.
"I guess I really look at it and decide that I don't know," Best said. "Wanting to open up that question and answer for them on things like class size, I guess I wonder why we can't."
For Sands, opening up that discussion tips the balance between labor and management and swung it toward the former.
He said it would result in a direct increase in property taxes, with no local accountability.
"I'm still a no vote on that," Sands said.
Sands warned, however, if Democrats are re-elected to the majority, the issue is sure to come up, given contributions from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
http://www.thehawkeye.com/Story/D87-issue3-101908
